Mavs Again Come Up Short Against NBA's Tallest Competition

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Wilt against the Bulls. Fall behind the Spurs and never quite catch up.

There’s a troubling trend for the Mavs and it goes like this: Beat the crappy teams and lose to the good ones. Yeah, it’s that simple.

After building a modest four-game winning streak against teams with losing records in the Sixers, Pistons, Knicks and Pelicans, the Mavs picked on somebody their own size and … lost. On Friday Chicago rallied from 16 down to bludgeon Dallas and Sunday night in San Antonio the Mavs made almost 70 percent of their shots in the 4th quarter and still lost because they couldn’t get key stops on defense.

The Mavs are now 13-18 against teams with winning records; 23-7 against sub-.500 opponents.

Which, of course, doesn’t bode well come playoff time – when they’ll be underdogs as a lower seed without home-court advantage.

“The way our record is against winning teams,” Dirk Nowitzki dead-panned to reporters after last night’s six-point loss, “I don’t know if we want to see anybody, just to be quite honest with you.”

What Dirk’s saying is that there won’t be a Detroit or Sacramento or Charlotte in late April and May. They’ll have to win games on the road, against teams with better records.

And while the Mavs have gotten healthy and remained a playoff team by beating up the NBA’s women and children, they have won a game they weren’t expected to win only once in the last six weeks – Feb. 12 at the Pacers.

The good news? Their next game is Wednesday, at the 25-33 Nuggets.

A native Texan who was born in Duncanville and graduated from UT-Arlington, Richie Whitt has been a mainstay in the Metroplex media since 1986. He’s held prominent roles on all media platforms including newspaper (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer), radio (105.3 The Fan) and TV (co-host on TXA 21 and numerous guest appearances, including NBC 5). He currently writes a sports/guy stuff blog at DFWSportatorium.com and lives in McKinney with his wife, Sybil, and two very spoiled dogs.